"WASHINGTON — It’s not just you. This presidential campaign truly has an air of unreality about it, like something out of the Twilight Zone.

The candidates, the pundits and the media in general seem increasingly detached from the real world we live in as a campaign of taunts and insults replaces real debate on issues.”

Oh, please. Having read a bit on American history this is nothing new, in fact none of the name calling in this year’s campaign would make the top ten list when compared to some of the crap slung in the past.

3. Whigs portray incumbent (and son of a farmer) Martin Van Buren as an effete snob with a penchant for really nice perfume and strutting in front of $2,400 mirrors like a peacock.

2. Karl Rove-engineered robo-calls help Bush win the 2000 Republican nomination by asking primary voters if they would be "more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain if you knew that he fathered an illegitimate black child?" http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2008/10/...moves-ever

Lincoln vs Douglas

" 'Little Giant' was a potshot at Douglas' height - he was only 5'4". He was also said to be "about five feet nothing in height and about the same in diameter the other way." Douglas took aim at Lincoln, too, saying he was a "horrid-looking wretch, sooty and scoundrelly in aspect, a cross between the nutmeg dealer, the horse-swapper and the nightman." Another good one? “Lincoln is the leanest, lankest, most ungainly mass of legs and arms and hatchet face ever strung on a single frame."

Hoover vs Smith

"Smith lost pretty badly to Republican Herbert Hoover, largely due to one reason: his religion. At the time of the election, the Holland Tunnel in New York was just being finished up. Republicans told everyone that the Catholic Smith had commissioned a secret tunnel 3,500 miles long, from the Holland Tunnel to the Vatican in Rome, and that the Pope would have say in all presidential matters should Smith be elected.” http://www.neatorama.com/2008/01/28/5-na...n-history/

Jefferson vs Adams

Adams supporters also claimed that Jefferson’s election would result in a civil war, that he would free the slaves, and that he was an atheist. As for his supporters, they were “cut-throats who walk in rags and sleep amid filth and vermin.” In other words, Adams’s supporters thought that Jefferson partisans were part of the 47 percent.

Jefferson fans returned the favor in kind. Adams was known in anti-Federalist papers as “His Rotundity.”* The Aurora, a pro-Jefferson Philadelphia paper run by Ben Franklin’s outspoken young grandson, called him “old, querulous, bald, blind, crippled, toothless Adams.”

“a John Adams supporter, who publically suggested that were Jefferson to become the president, “we would see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution.”

Callender (a Jefferson supporter) wrote that Adams was a rageful, lying, warmongering fellow; a “repulsive pedant” and “gross hypocrite” who “behaved neither like a man nor like a woman but instead possessed a hideous hermaphroditical character.”http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/20...0804a23fea

Adams vs Jackson

"It gets better. One of the handbills also accused Jackson of being a cannibal, that after massacring over 500 Indians one evening, “the blood thirsty Jackson began again to show his cannibal propensities, by ordering his Bowman to dress a dozen of these Indian bodies for his breakfast, which he devoured without leaving even a fragment.”

"Congressman Charles Ogle, a Harrison supporter, denounced him for the “regal splendor of the President’s Palace.” Quite memorably, Ogle charged Van Buren with having the White House landscaper build rounded mounds on the grounds with little gazebos on top, which at a distance supposedly resembled a woman’s erect nipple.”

Kerry vs Bush

"Who can forget the merciless "Swift-boating" of Kerry, which generated not only a new low in mudslinging, but a whole new term? The attack sought to cast doubt on Kerry’s Vietnam War record by suggesting he did not really earn his battlefield decorations.”

Dole vs Hagan

"During the notorious battle between Republican incumbent Elizabeth Dole and challenger Kay Hagan, the Dole campaign hit upon a tactic that would surely take down her rival, who had been inching ahead in the polls. Hagan would be denounced as an atheist. An ad called "Godless Americans," cooked up to target Hagan's religion, featured a voice saying, "There is no God!" over a picture of the candidate's face. The voice was not Hagan’s but the ad sure wanted you to think it was.”http://www.alternet.org/story/154346/you...udslinging

Apparently being an atheist is as bad as it gets and we’re not there yet in the 2016 campaign. We’re still using innuendos regarding genital size, I want to hear Clinton come right out and say that Trump has a small dick and then to counter the argument Trump whips out Russell the one-eyed muscle right in front of a crowd. Only then can we say this campaign has entered the Twilight Zone.

“I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s.”~Mark Twain
“Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.”~ Ambrose Bierce